Pierre Marivaux

Plays by Pierre Marivaux

Pierre Marivaux's play The Game of Love and Chance (Le Jeu de l'amour et du hasard) is an 18th-century French comedy of manners in the Commedia dell'arte tradition, based on the simplest of plot devices, the exchanging places of master and valet, mistress and maidservant. It was first performed on 23 January 1730 by the Comédie Italienne.

This translation by Stephen Mulrine was published by Nick Hern Books in its Drama Classics series in 2007.

In the play, a young woman, Silvia, is visited by her betrothed, Dorante, whom she does not know. To get a better idea of the type of person he is, she trades places with her servant, Lisette, and disguises herself. However, unbeknownst to her, her fiancé has the same idea and trades places with his valet, Arlequin. The 'game' pits the two false servants against the two false masters, and in the end, the couples fall in love with their appropriate counterpart.

Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux (1688-1763) was a French playwright, novelist, and journalist whose work is characterized by an extreme subtlety of language and feeling. This idiosyncratic style was referred to, originally disparagingly though now more respectfully, as Marivaudage. Marie-Nicolas Bouillet writes in her Dictionnaire Universel: 'It is this that constitutes Marivaudage - a fastidious affectation in the style, a great subtlety in the feelings, and an immense complication in the plots.'

Although Marivaux continued to write for both companies, the majority of his plays were written for the Italian troupe, whose productions proved far more successful, perhaps because they better appreciated the refinements of his style.